Monday, August 22, 2016

Brutalist Street View

Google's panoramic Street View imagery is a great resource for documenting and reporting on building styles around the world. For example, Arti-Fact has been collating and collecting architecturally interesting buildings and sculptures that can be found on Google Maps Street View for over four years.

Artstreetecture is a similar collection of architecturally interesting Street View images. However Artstreetacture has a narrower focus than Arti-Fact, concentrating purely on the Modernist and Brutalist architecture of the 20th and 21st Centuries.

Brutalism obviously has its fair share of critics. Many people find Brutalist buildings cold and ugly. However there does seem to be some re-evaluation of Brutalism going on in architectural criticism. For example, in Britain there have been campaigns to save and conserve examples of Brutalist architecture.

Thanks to the work of Artstreetecture and Google Maps Street View you can view Brutalist buildings from around the world and make up your own mind about whether these buildings deserve saving or whether they deserve the wrecking-ball.